Victoria Vesna and James Gimzewski - Zero@wavefunction, Responsive Environment/ Nano Art, 2001

Zero@wavefunction allows visitors to experiment with a large-scale projection of buckyball molecules programmed to respond to the touch of their shadow. Subtle action affects the buckyballs, replicating atomic behavior.

Albert Einsteins greatest contribution to humanity is the discovery that matter and energy are inter-convertible. Matter appears, changes and disappears. Nothing is solid, not even a rock. The atoms and electrons in a rock are subtle and alive just as the ocean is. These particles are described in quantum mechanics by a complex function known as a wavefunction. A wavefunction contains all the probabilities and energetic possibilities of particles: (space, energy and sometimes time). These wavefunctions are basically connected and when two come close, they are both changed. In fact they have a probability to create nothing: zero.

Zero@wavefunction installation and interactivity is based on the way a nanoscientist manipulates an individual molecule (billions of times smaller than common human experience) projected on a monumental scale. When a person passes by, they cast a larger than life shadow on the molecule and activate responsive buckyballs. The visualizations are of buckyballs that respond via sensors to the movement of the persons shadow and the possibility of manipulating the molecule emerges.

Zero@wavefunction is one of a few collaborative art and science projects of Victoria Vesna, a media artist, and James Gimzewski, a nanoscientist. Both are professors at UCLA, home to the recently formed California Nano Systems Institute (CNSI). They first started their dialogue during a conference entitled from Networks to Nanosystems in November 2001. Soon thereafter, Gimzewski opened his lab to Victoria Vesna and together they initiated a number of projects whose goal is to make nanoscience more accessible and understandable to the broader public. At the same time they are interested engaging the audience in probing larger philosophical questions about the impact of this emerging science on the culture at large.

For the past six months they have worked together on developing projects such as: the official CNSI web site; a streaming video project, Windows to Nanotechnology and a major installation, Zero@Wavefunction that it has been premiered at the Biennial of Electronic Arts in Perth, Australia, August, 2002. There is no lead person in this collaboration it is a true back and forth exchange of wavefunction energy. There is no contract it is a collaboration based on their true interest in each others worlds.

Nanotechnology is a brave new world and within it there are dangers and immense opportunities to change not only world economy, but the entire structure of society and the environment of the planet. It has no clearly articulated vision or direction and is generally not understood but greeted by wonderment, curiosity, fear and distrust by the public.

Credits
Victoria Vesna & Jim Gimzewski
Josh Nimoy: Software Artist
Pete Conolly: Sensor Artist
Li Xu: Web Designer
More info: http://notime.arts.ucla.edu/zerowave/

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• nano
• technology
• art
• installation
• interactive
• molecule
• visualisation
• atomic
• behavior.

[dgeramie1]

this video rocks!